Sæmó in Finland

10th-grade students had the chance to travel to Finland this January. Here's the story in the students' own words.

Sæmó travels to Finland

From Jan. 10-17, we traveled to Finland thanks to Nordplus. Nordplus is a program that includes Iceland, Finland and the Faroe Islands. This program tries to push teenagers outside their comfort zones, and a group of 10th graders from Iceland participated. They traveled all the way to northern Finland to the city of Oulu. Oulu is the largest city in northern Finland, home to over 200,000 people. This program has been in the works for our group for about a year. Our adventure began at the end of March 2025 when we welcomed guests from Finland and the Faroe Islands.

Sæmundarskóli regularly applies for grants through Erasmus and Nordplus on our behalf. This program focuses on stepping outside your comfort zone, which is what we wanted to experience along with discovering a new culture and meeting new people.

We had the chance to try all kinds of new and exciting activities on our trip to Finland that most of us had never experienced before. We tried ice fishing, which involved drilling a hole through the ice. The ice was 58 centimeters thick, then we grabbed fishing rods and started fishing. We caught three fish total, and we Icelanders caught one fish. We also experienced taking an ice bath in the Oulu River. It was really fun but extremely cold. We did many other activities like skiing, visiting reindeer, working on fun school projects, taking a sightseeing tour of downtown Oulu and trying all kinds of different foods we had never tasted before. Most of these activities were completely new to all of us and were well outside our comfort zones. Even so, they were all really enjoyable, and most of us would be happy to experience many of these things again. We feel this trip made us stronger and that if we participated in a program like this again, it would be no problem at all.

We learned so much on the trip, but the most important part was staying in other people's homes and living with them, which was pretty difficult at first but as time passed and we got to know each other better, it became really enjoyable to be in a home with people we didn't know at all initially. This experience taught us a lot, like how to be polite, what kind of food they eat and what they're used to in their homes. Throughout the trip, we learned a great deal and met lots of new and interesting people. We also learned about their school rules, like not being allowed to have phones in school, which we thought was a bit strange since that's not the case at our school.

We encourage everyone who can to apply for programs like this. This program meant so much to us, and we will definitely apply again if our next school offers opportunities like this.

Thank you,

Nordplus group, 10th grade Sæmundarskóli